Films set in the post-Civil War Old West usually include a mix of grizzled old vets who moved out to the frontier after the war. In a slight twist, The Salvation features a war veteran, but not one we’ve seen before. Jon (Mads Mikkelsen, 2011’s The Three Musketeers) earned his thousand yard stare as a Dane fighting Prussia in a losing effort. Lured by the prospect of cheap land and open country, Jon joins the horde and heads west to seek his fortune before sending for his wife and son. Now six years after Appomattox, Jon is succeeding in the rugged landscape. What he fails to notice is the big picture. Oil is lying around and greedy companies are maneuvering to take advantage. Immigrants continue to trickle into the area seeking their own piece of the pie. Yet, The Salvation stiff arms these tempting subplots in favor of boilerplate personal revenge resulting in a forgettable western tale.As The Salvation is a revenge story, the first act must inflict grievous harm against our hero to instill in him the requisite amount of animosity and hate to finish the movie. The scene is certainly unpleasant. Jon meets his wife and 10-year old son, who he has not seen in seven years, at the dusty train station to take them to their new American life. On the stagecoach to town, a vile, drunken, no good louse and his sidekick throw Jon out of the coach, murder his son, and rape and murder his wife. It is not a scene you will look forward to seeing again.

Jon takes his immediate revenge, but this sets in motion the film’s larger machinery. The attack’s perpetrator is the brother of the region’s most notorious gunslinger, Delarue (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Delarue runs the town like a robber baron wielding more authority than the town’s mayor and sheriff, who execute the duties of their respective offices in name only. Delarue wants to know who the mystery man on the stagecoach was and will keep killing innocent townspeople until he finds out. Delarue reminds me of Liberty Valence. Here is a man full of spit, fire, and bravado operating outside the law in broad daylight but expects it to work for him at the same time. The sheriff, Mallick (Douglas Henshall), is not as helpless or whiny as the Marshal from Liberty Valence, but he is not about to stick his neck out for the town either. No, Jon and his brother, Peter (Mikael Persbrandt, 2014’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies), must face Delarue and his motley band of mercenaries High Noon style, amidst a cowardly town and on their own.

A slight wild card appears when the widow of the stagecoach bad guy shows up. This is the stunning Eva Green (2014’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For), but wait, her character is a mute having had her tongue cut out by Indians in her youth. A mute Eva Green? All she does is stare and glower, which she does spectacularly, but come on, anyone can play the mute widow. Why bring on someone as talented and scene stealing as Eva Green to stand around and say nothing? It is a Casino Royale (2006) reunion for Green and Mikkelsen as they worked together before in that James Bond reboot. It just feels wrong to watch Eva Green only stand there on screen with nothing to do.

What about the scheming oil companies? What about the transformation of the frontier into civilized territory? Director Kristian Levring doesn’t care. Levring opts to create an old fashioned western with a quiet hero where only the villains and cowards flap their tongues. There is an anti-climactic penultimate gunfight between the hero and the horde of bad guys ensuring when you think of memorable, recent westerns, The Salvation will not be one which comes to mind. Premiering at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, The Salvation was a Midnight Projection in the Out of Competition category while Tommy Lee Jones’s far superior western, The Homesman, competed in the main competition. If you see both films, it is clear as day The Salvation skips over just about every opportunity to set itself apart and show you something new. Kristian Levring chose instead to bring us something old, something borrowed, and something blue.